Carona backers flock to Hutchens (6/29/09)

Sandra Hutchenswas appointed sheriff just one year ago, replacing Mike Carona. I hit her fundraiser Thursday night at the Island Hotel and found her already kneedeep in the process of trying to keep the job. There’s less than a year to go before the June primary.

While Hutchens had a few smaller political events in recent months, this was by far her most successful, according to her fundraising consultant, Julie Paule, raising about $95,000. The list of attendees and donors to the $500-a-plate affair was impressively broad.

Perhaps most significantly, she has captured some of the big-money players who helped fund Carona. These aren’t people who were in Carona’s inner circle or (necessarily) got concealed-weapons permits or badges, but they are people who Carona successfully courted (or vice-versa), knew him on a first-name basis and could probably get him on the phone any time. Like: car dealer Dennis Assael(BMW), restaurateur Antonio Cagnolo(Antonello), physician J. Brennan Cassidy(CMA president), businessman Paul Musco(Gemini Industries), developer Donna Porter(!) and others.

Either listed as co-chairs, in attendance, or both, were: New Majority types Tom Tuckerand Dale Dykema; the Argyroses, car dealers Fletcher Jonesand Don Crevier, developers Dan Young(Irvine Co.) and William Lyon; (forgive me if this is starting to read like a Reiff column, just a few more), current or former politicians John Moorlach, Gaddi Vasquez, Bill Steinerand Diane Harkey; and, most important, two of my Follies castmates, Sonya Bellaand Mia Maffei.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Bacagave Hutchens a 13-minute introduction in which he said the two “are like brother and sister.” Hutchens spoke relatively briefly but basically said her motivation to seek election comes from those who “every day” tell her, “Thank you for restoring integrity to the Sheriff’s Department.”

Noticeably absent fromthe event, however, were the other two county supervisors who were her early supporters, Pat Batesand Janet Nguyen. So, too, with another early Hutchens supporter, former Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Hunt. Hunt, as it happens, is Hutchens’ only challenger so far.

(Two others have been mentioned, Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Waltersand Anaheim Deputy Chief Craig Hunter. Walters is said to be considering it but is still smarting from the grinding appointment process in which he narrowly lost to Hutchens. Mike Schroeder says he hopes Walters runs but that if he doesn’t, there will be a search for another chief to challenge Hutchens. Hunter told me flat-out he’s not going to run.)

Hunt, however, sounds all in. “It’s always been my intention to run in 2010; nothing’s happened to change that,” Hunt, now a private detective, told me Friday.

But what about you supporting her when she was appointed? I asked.

“She was the lesser of two evils,” he said. “She was really appointed by three members of the board, and two now are not satisfied. … She certainly doesn’t have a mandate.”

But Hunt says rather than focus on her, he wants to promote “the plan I have for the future.” He says to expect a formal announcement “in the weeks ahead.”

Hutchens will be vulnerable with gunrights advocates who object to her pulling roughly 200 concealed-weapons permits, and to those who found her staff’s presence and behavior at a related supervisors’ meetings heavy-handed. It’s hard to say whether those issues will have much traction. My guess is that the grand jury report telling folks to lay off her and let her do her job is more indicative of the electorate.

Probably more importantwill be the two county labor unions that represent Hutchens’ workers - and those unions’ independent expenditures in a race expected to cost a serious candidate at least a million or two. County (non-sworn) employees union chief Nick Berardinowas at Hutchens’ fundraiser, but said his attendance doesn’t imply endorsement. Similarly, Wayne Quint, head of the deputies’ union, told me he thinks Hutchens is “a really good cop doing an admirable job considering the hand she was dealt,” but says it is too soon to discuss who his union will back.

Mickadeit writes Mon.-Fri. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com

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